Swimming: Sautin dive adds to gold medal collection

Ciaran Giles
Monday 14 July 2003 00:00 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

The Russian diver Dmitry Sautin added to his medal haul at the World Championships yesterday by winning the men's synchronised three-metre platform with Alexander Dobroskok.

Sautin, who collected his 11th gold medal and 20th in total from Olympic Games, World Championships and World Cups, earned a total of 369.18 points with his partner.

It was enough to see off the challenge of the Chinese pair Wang Tianling and Wang Feng (343.29pts) and the Germans Andreas Wels and Tobias Schellenberg (334.44pts).

The Russians had been leading after the preliminaries and Sautin, who arrived on the diving scene in this same city in 1992 as a teenage bronze medallist in the individual three-metre event at the Barcelona Olympics, made sure of a winning return.

The Chinese divers, who won four out of the five men's gold medals at the Fukuoka World Championships two years ago, were back in top level competition after missing the final legs of the 2003 Grand Prix because of the SARS outbreak.

China's women divers took the 10-metre synchronised final, with Lao Lishi and Li Ting rattling up 344.58 points to beat Australia's Loudy Tourky and Lynda Dackiw (323.34pts). Russians Evgenya Olshevskaya and Svetlana Timoshinina took third place with 300.12pts. The top three automatically qualify for next year's Athens Olympics.

Lao and Ting entered the water out of sync for the fourth dive ­ being awarded just 67.20 points ­ but a magnificent 90.78pt final dive clinched victory. The 15-year-old Lao said she was confident of winning the 10m individual on Wednesday, but expected serious competition from within her own team and from Canada's Emilie Heymans.

Viola Valli, of Italy, successfully defended her 5km open water title to claim the first gold medal of the championships, while Evgueni Kochkarov, of Russia, won gold in the men's event.

The shortest of the three distance races began and ended in the harbour, adjacent to the centre of the city's downtown area. There was little wind and water temperatures touched 25C throughout the course.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in